


What a Year and What a Night

by APgeeksout



Category: Fast and the Furious Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-09
Updated: 2013-10-09
Packaged: 2017-12-28 22:30:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/997676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/pseuds/APgeeksout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a reason for everything they do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What a Year and What a Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Merfilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/gifts).



> Set in the space between the 5th and 6th installments. Title snagged from Bastille's "Laura Palmer".

Dominic Toretto has a reason for everything he does, every move he makes.  Though Elena is confident that she was a good police officer, she also knows that she can't chalk her understanding up to professional insight or investigative skill.  It's just that she can't imagine him bringing her out of her old life and into this one -new for both of them - without reasons heavy enough to outweigh his reservations about expanding his inner circle, which her former superiors had classified as a criminal enterprise, to include another former cop.        

There are reasons, too, why everyone he touches follows his lead.  Reasons otherwise-sensible people walk with him into danger and multiple felonies and, in rare cases, even death.    Elena knows this because she finds herself riding beside him, despite that it makes her an accessory and renders her a fugitive, for reasons of her own. 

There were a lot of reasons Dom had made this house  _his_ house. 

Its rear courtyard has an enormous brickwork barbecue pit. 

"Cookouts," he'd said, smiling softly and exchanging with Mia a look that had already become familiar to Elena.  It was the look that meant he was thinking about the life he'd started out to have.  The one that had come before prison and federal warrants and dead lovers and narrow escapes and living only in nations that don't extradite to most of the Western hemisphere.   

It's nearest the house Mia fell in love with: the one with the big, fenced yard and the room with the windowseat and view of the water she said she'd felt at once was meant to be the nursery. 

"Jack likes it already," she'd pronounced, spinning a slow circle in a patch of sunlight on the wood floor, looking more carefree than Elena had seen her in the months they'd spent together on the road.

Of course, even the "nearest" house on this island, with their extravagant budgets, is still some distance away.  1.37 miles, if traveled by the winding strip of well-maintained road that curls along the eastern edge of their properties and skirts the coastline until it delivers travelers into the nearest village.  She's lost track of how many uncollected bets have accumulated between Dom and Brian (and anyone else who can be suckered into a race).  Elena thinks Mia would probably join them, if she could fit more comfortably behind the wheel of her little red car these days.  Elena has a standing invitation to join them. 

"I'll even let you win the first time out," Brian had promised.  "Chivalry and all that."

Dom had chuckled, "You gotta be in the lead to let somebody else win, buster."  He'd paused to loop an arm around her waist and pull her close.  "And my girl don't need your charity."  

Still, she'd declined, as she does each time they repeat the offer and their affectionate, half-serious argument.  The road is not where she takes her risks.  

Another thing in the house's favor, maybe the main one, if Elena were inclined to make Dom put them into words and rank them, is the long second-floor hallway with no fewer than four guest bedrooms.  It's becoming rare for all four to be unoccupied at once.  This weekend, three are in use, though one appears to serve mainly as a holding area for Roman's extensive wardrobe.  Elena is fairly sure that he and Suki and Tej are all sleeping in the room next door.      

The part of Elena that was a policewoman knows the house is too big: an ostentation that draws attention to all of them, highlights how much money is at their disposal and how few legitimate explanations there are for its source.  The part of her that's lived most of her life in the favela knows that the house is too big: frivolous, with its formal dining room and parlor, each one larger than her entire apartment in Rio. 

But the part of her that's not law enforcement or someone who has to worry that the grocery money won't come through this week or an angry widow, the part of her that's just a woman, enjoying the man she's chosen, can't deny that it's luxurious, using the marble bath, just deep enough for two, and sleeping with the french doors onto the balcony open wide to let the sweet night breeze snake into the room. 

What she fears will always be he largest part of her, though, is the part that's already lost two families - first in having to bury her husband, and later in sliding into the passenger seat of that American muscle car and riding out of her city, perhaps forever - and that part of Elena loves the enormous, ridiculous house without reservation.  Especially at times like this, with music spilling into the night, the courtyard busy with laughter and bragging, and the scents of woodfire and sizzling meats mingling with the salt of the sea.  

Brian stands at the barbecue, meticulously turning and seasoning steaks and sausages and chicken.  Tej is stationed nearby, preparing ears of corn and halved peaches for the grill.  Roman stands between them, holding forth with animated gestures, while the others shake their heads with amused and exasperated expressions.  Elena cannot quite make out the words of their exchange from her seat at the edge of the courtyard where the paving bricks give way to dry grasses and sandy soil, but she would be willing to wager with anyone who asked that somewhere along the line, Roman had offered some off-color commentary on the subject of peaches. 

Mia is nearby, carefully arranged in a stuffed chair carried out from the library, one hand spread across her round belly, a fizzy, pinkish fruit juice concoction in the other.  Suki sits crosslegged on the bricks in front of the chair, with one of Mia's feet propped in her lap, using blue polish and a tiny brush to paint an intricate pattern on her toenails. 

She's already done their fingernails, and Elena admires the silver and copper swirls that decorate her fingers.  When she'd joined the police, so many of the people she'd known became wary and distant, and there had been only a few female officers in her district, none she'd grown close to.  It's taken her awhile to get used to having girlfriends again.

As she paints, Suki tells them about doing design work for an actor who stars in American action movies.  

"I guess he's really Method, or whatever.  So he gets the car, all flash like his character in the movie, and decides to drive like he thinks a street racer must.  Doesn't hurt the car, but gets spotted right away.  Leads the police all through downtown.  Car ends up in impound, but not before it's on all the tabloid shows.  My art all over the news."

"Hey, we saw that, too!" Han says, approaching from the kitchen carrying a tray of salted mugs and lime wedges.  Gisele follows with a fresh pitcher of margarita. "An orange and black Mark II, right?" 

Suki nods and grins, claiming one of the glasses.

"It was playing in our hotel in Macau," Gisele says, topping up the drink for her.  "You're an international celebrity."  

Elena accepts a margarita of her own and walks with it a few steps back into the grass, taking in the whole picture: everyone beautiful and boisterous and at ease together.  And Dom, leaning against the doorframe, watching them all with a satisfied smile.  His expression brightens even further when he catches her eye. 

He pushes off of the doorway and cuts through the scene to meet her.  "It's good, isn't it?" It doesn't sound like a question, the way he says it.

"It's a very good party," she agrees.  "And a very good margarita," she says, offering him a sip. 

He takes the drink in one hand and her fingers in the other.  "I meant life," he says. "Life is good right now."

There are reasons for everything they do: Dom, Mia, Brian, all of them.  Even Elena.  But they all boil down to a single one: Family.  Love.   

One way or another, it's the reason they are all here tonight.  And it's the reason why, months from now, when Hobbs appears, they will all have to work for him.  And the reason Elena will have to let them go. 


End file.
